A PAGE FROM HISTORY- THE PESHAWAR VALE HUNT by Maj Gen (Retd) Syed Ali Hamid Hunting on horseback with a pack of hounds chasing a fox was one of the sports that the British brought with them to India. Before Partition, there were twelve hunt clubs in India but the Peshawar Vale Hunt (P.V.H.) was by far the most famed and popular; so famous that in 1934 a book was published on the hunt titled The History of the Peshawar Vale Hunt authored by Captain G S Hurst. The author states that it was a normal custom in those days [1863-70] for regiments to have their own private packs of hounds. Infantry battalions, the Rifle and Artillery Brigade, the Corps of Guides and cavalry regiments like the 10th Bengal Lancers (Hodson’s Horse), all maintained their own pack of hounds. Some of these packs also went to war. 16th Lancers brought an impressive number of foxhounds with them during the Second Afghan War (1878-1880). The pack marched with the regiment to Kabul, and then back to Peshawar. The P.V.H. was formed by the Army in 1870 out of the regimental and private packs stationed around Peshawar. The hounds that hunted in India originally came from England but were later bred in India for the first time in Ooty. The hounds hunted the jackals (called the Jack). The small Indian silver fox was occasionally found, but it usually afforded little sport, as it leaves very little scent. The British generally felt that the ‘jacks’ were not as cunning or as fast as the British fox, but an American who rode with the Lahore Hunt has a different impression: “Jackals run very straight, and it seems to me are far faster than either the English fox or our own. They are, of course, bigger and stronger animals, and by the very nature of their struggle for existence, have developed an amazing amount of cunning and stamina. The jack in question carried us a good eight miles with ruler precision before hounds came to their noses beside an apparently empty wooden bridge across a dry ditch. The Master cast in all directions and was just about to give up when up popped the jack from a hidden hole in the bank under the bridge. Taking a broken field run that would have done credit to a Notre Dame back-fielder, he zigzagged through the astonished pack and made good his escape. He then led us another five miles in an equally straight line before hounds nabbed him in a brush cutters hut and broke him up”. The Records of the PVH of 1870 opened with the sentence: The far-famed Shires of the Eusufzaie Valley have long been acknowledged to be the only real hunting country in India”. The Shires of the Yusufzai country appear in a painting done by the famous artist ‘Snaffles’ who also illustrated the book The History of the Peshawar Vale Hunt. Snaffles (Charles Johnson Payne 1884-1967) was one of the greatest sporting and military artist of his time. While in India, Snaffles travelled extensively and also spent a considerable time with the Scinde Horse, from which many of his Indian-period sketches and paintings derive. He also travelled throughout northern India and in Peshawar stayed with Major Victor Wakely, whipper-in to the Peshawar Vale Hounds. The main job of the Whippers-in (or Whips) was to keep the pack all together, for which purpose they carried a whip. It wasn’t always safe and injuries and deaths did occur. In 1919, the Master of the Hunt, Lt Col Irvine lost his life in the Nagoman River. The P.V.H. was only one of the few of the twelve Hunts in India that survived Independence, but then tragedy struck from an unexpected direction. Syed Shahid Hamid (my father) was posted to Peshawar in June 1950 to command the 100 Infantry Brigade (the old Peshawar Brigade). In his autobiography on the ‘Early Years of Pakistan’, he recounts: “Peshawar was the center of the Vale Hunt and was considered the finest hunting country east of the Suez and I was looking forward to hunting there. Before my arrival a gunner colonel and his wife had been looking after the hunt in the absence of John Dent of the Political Service, who was the Master. They met me in Karachi on their way to the U.K. and told me they had shot the entire pack as they considered that Pakistanis were incapable of looking after them. I was stunned. On John’s return from the U.K. he was dismayed by the colonel’s action and we decided to re-raise the pack and imported hounds from U.K.” John (Dent) was one of the best political officers Shahid had ever met and truly loved the Frontier and was a contemporary and friend of the Late President Ghulam Ishaq Khan. Apparently John Dent did an excellent job in resurrecting the pack of hounds. In the early 1950s a British RAF pilot had the occasion to ride with the Peshawar Hunt and recounts: “The hunt was now controlled by a Pakistani lieutenant colonel, but it was still being run very much like the Bicester Hunt I knew so well. I had a wonderful days hunting.” A famous personality who was a member of the Peshawar Hunt was Shahzada Colonel Khushwaqt ul-Mulk, (father of Siraj ul-Mulk and known as ‘Khushi’ to his friends) who was from the princely family of Chitral. He was one of the first Indian officers to be commissioned from IMA in 1932 and commanded the South Waziristan Scouts. Khushqat ul-Mulk considered Peshawar his second home where he bought the famous Holmes Studio belonging to R.B. Holmes (the pre-Independence photographer from Peshawar) and renamed it ‘Chitral House’. He was a regular member of the Peshawar Club and remained a ‘Whippers-in’ of P.V.H. for 16 years from 1935 to 1951. He was also a great friend of John Dent and the two rode together on the Hunt; John the Master and Khushi the whipper-in. Khushwaqt ul-Mulk was probably one of the first Indians to be admitted within the precincts of the Peshawar Club which (like similar clubs in India) till the 1930s was exclusively for the British. When 16th Cavalry arrived in Peshawar around this period, Col William, the commanding officer refused to let out his horses to members of the club if his Indian officers could not receive equal treatment. 16th Cavalry was one of the first Indian cavalry regiments to be Indianised and fifty per cent of the officers were Indians. One of these Indian officers was Sirdar Shaukat Hayat Khan who recollects in his autobiography ‘The Nation that lost its Soul’: “As his embargo meant literally the closing down of the P.V.H. the club’s executive committee asked for a joint meeting, hoping that our delegation would consist of British officers. On the contrary Bill Williams nominated all Indians and gave them clear instructions to withdraw our regiments cooperation should the going prove to be rough. The result was a foregone conclusion. This strongest citadel of British exclusiveness was broken and for the first time since British rule in the nineteenth century the doors of Peshawar Club were thrown open to the subjects.” In the early 1950s, 19th Lancers was stationed in Peshawar and there was a concentration of armoured regiments nearby in Kohat and Risalpur providing enough enthusiasts to ride with the Hunt. One of these enthusiasts was a young lieutenant named Syed Wajahat Hussain who had transferred from Central India Horse to 19th Lancers on Independence and posted to Peshawar. In his autobiography, he recollects: “The Peshawar Vale hunt was very active with weekly meetings, starting early Sunday mornings, with a good field usually around Hayatabad; in those days it was all barren and conducive for hunting; now it is a prosperous new town. The Hunt usually ended in some Khan’s or Malik’s hujra, with sumptuous lunches at their great fortress-like houses and beautiful gardens.” As the armoured regiments gradually shifted to the Punjab, the P.V.H. slowly died. By the late 1950s the pack still had about 15-20 ‘couples’ and when the 1st Armoured Division concentrated in Kharian, Maj Gen Sahabzada Yaqub had the pack brought to the new garrison. The legend of the P.V.H. lived on with the pack under the control of the equally legendary Gustasab Mirza (of the Army Service Corps) affectionately known throughout the Army as ‘Mirza Hound’. He was broad-built and a great galloper who believed that ‘the devil takes the hind most’. On one of the Hunts, leading the Field with his hounds he urged the riders on, shouting “Chalo! Chalo! Koi Girta hai.” Koi Marta hai. (Go! Go! Some will fall. Some will die.). A number of the riders were novices and from behind came the high pitched voice of Brig Ghaziuddin (Gussy) Hyder imposing caution: “No! No! No marna (dying) or girna (falling). Ride carefully.” After the disruption caused by the 1965 War, the hounds were shifted to the Army Dog School at Rawalpindi. Occasionally in winter they were taken out for a hunt in the area of Tarlai on the Burma Road leading to PISNTECH. The hunt terminated at the farm of Maj Gen Shahid Hamid where the participants were entertained to a brunch. As is the unavoidable law of nature, the dogs faded away and all that is left is a memory of the P.V.H. Maybe on some bright winter morning a farmer tending his orchard in ‘the shires of Yusufzai country’, hears in the far distance the repeated call of a hunting horn accompanied by the baying of hounds and the faint call of ‘Tally-ho. There goes the Jack’. Authors Note: I am grateful to Anis Hyder, son of Brig ‘Gussy’ Hyder for providing me the picture of the Vale Hunt at Kharian and to Brig Jafar Khan for the anecdote on this Hunt.
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 19:34:46 +0000
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